Today, Lebanon; yesterday, Iraq; the day before, Afghanistan.
There’s no question to me that the Bush administration has a kind of global attention deficit disorder. Any large organization has difficulty keeping its eye on more than one ball, but the Bush White House is a special case. It’s clear that one reason the U.S. project in Afghanistan is now faltering is that the administration stopped paying much attention to it soon after Bin Laden’s escape from Tora Bora. “On to Baghdad!” was the cry then.
Iraq has held White House attention for a good long time — unsurprisingly given the enormous investment of money and blood and credibility in a misbegotten misadventure. But now, as American goals disappear into the mist of implausibility and Iraq sinks into the confusion of a sputtering civil war, Iraq, too, has become yesterday’s problem — displaced on the front burner by the alarming escalation of Israel’s war with Hezbollah and Hamas.
Watch in coming weeks as the diplomatic energies of the Bush team, such as they are, concentrate on Israel and Lebanon. We don’t talk with Syria or Iran so there isn’t that much diplomacy to do right now. But the potential for wider regional war is dangerous, and the White House’s ability to juggle multiple problems isn’t impressive, and to the extent anyone in Washington has any imagination and energy left to try to nudge the world towards peace, for the moment it will be aimed at the Israeli/Arab conflict.
In the past, each time the Iraq situation has seemed to be deteriorating, Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld have patched together some sort of face-saving event (A turkey for the troops! A government that only took six months to form after the elections!) to maintain an illusion of progress. I think it’s quite likely that Iraq will deteriorate as the Lebanon crisis continues, and I also think this time the U.S. is going to be stuck without a rabbit to pull out of the hat.
[tags]president bush, iraq, lebanon, afghanistan[/tags]
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